


False Flag

by Shadow_Chaser



Series: The Quartermaster's Recollections [14]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 00!Anthea, BAMF!Anthea, Gen, More action-style story along the lines of "Double-O", Post-Episode: s04e03 The Final Problem, Post-SPECTRE, Q is a Holmes, Q is a good brother, The Holmes family always have plans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-07
Updated: 2019-08-07
Packaged: 2020-08-11 03:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20146930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Chaser/pseuds/Shadow_Chaser
Summary: In the aftermath and cleanup of Max Denbigh's Nine-Eyes debacle, not all rats flee the burning ship. Some, just want to watch the world and government burn. Featuring 00!Anthea and references to Season 4 of Sherlock.





	False Flag

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Legume_Shadow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Legume_Shadow/gifts).

> Altering the ending of “Spectre” and probably Bond 25 to work in my universe; Bond is still with Madeline, but hasn't retired. He's still the ruthless, cunning, determined double-o that we all love. Please read the other stories in this series before reading this one.

Eurus Holmes was the mad, but brilliant sister of the two _known_ Holmes brothers. Secreted away not only for the safety of the public, but for her own sake; she was never consulted as an expert by either of her brothers, until Q insisted. Though he never met her in person, he felt a kinship with her the day he saw her on Sherringford's cameras. Sherlock had been trying to help repair her shattered mind, spending time with her, giving her the love and attention an older brother could only give to a forgotten sister. Sentiment drove the middle of the Holmes brother, no matter how much he claimed to be a high-functioning sociopath. And so Q had gently insisted that perhaps Sherlock involve their sister in the latest plan.

Mycroft was not happy.

But Q never cared for what Mycroft thought.

Sherlock, always ready to pounce on an opportunity to annoy the eldest of the Holmes brother readily agreed. So, the two Holmes brothers explained the situation to their younger sister. Even Mycroft reluctantly came around to Eurus' well thought-out plan. At first glance it was to entrap those who had not been swept up in the aftermath of the Nine-Eyes debacle with Max Denbigh. But even Q wondered if their gifted sister had predicted this outcome. Perhaps she did, a genius at reading her own brothers and picking out the minutest detail.

Yet, Q some times wondered if the Fates, Gods, or whatever deity controlled and built this world, decided that perhaps the Holmes siblings were its personal chew toy. Judging by Mycroft's neutral look, he could tell the same thought was running through his older brother's head. The oldest of the Holmes siblings' hands were bound by a zip tie in front of him, but there was no duct tape over his mouth.

A glance at Sherlock told Q a different story. The middle of the Holmes brothers had a completely gleeful sparkle in his eyes working around the duct tape that had been placed over his mouth. His hands were loose, but held away from his body in a clear sign that he was attempting to not be hostile. Next to him, Dr. John Watson looked rather cross and put out, standing loosely, hands bound in front of him with a zip tie. A strip of duct tape was across his mouth too. Q could only imagine what was going through the doctor's head. To Mycroft's right was Anthea, bound the same way; stripped of her mobile, she looked rather afraid. Her mouth was not taped, their captors more than likely thinking she was nothing but a lowly personal assistant to Mycroft. Q knew she was anything but as her eyes swiveled back and forth on the closest person that held them on gunpoint.

The main cameras to this particular office in the Diogenes Club were already offline and Q was working from a hidden set of cameras. Ones that even Mycroft did not know he had planted long ago. It at least kept him updated of the situation. There was no audio, but Q had learned how to read lips long ago.

“Q, what's the situation?” M's voice buzzed in his ear. He knew the man was watching from the situation room near his office several floors up.

“These cameras have no audio, but I can approximate a word translator. The only problem is if our little rat doesn't face the cameras, the visual translator won't be able to pick it up.”

“We can substitute up here,” Moneypenny's affectionately warm voice clicked across the comm line and Q smiled. Trust the former 008 to be an expert on reading lips.

He started to type, his fingers writing up a quick program to compliment the cameras he had set up. After a few minutes he hit the enter key. “Program in play,” he murmured.

“Q, bring up feed four and enhance our rat's hand please.” Q was quite surprised to hear Bond's dry tones across the comm lines, but did as he asked.

“Ah...” he said, his words carrying across the comm lines as everyone, both in the situation room and those down in Q-branch's lab discovered what the double-o had spotted. The familiar crest tattooed on the traitor's ring finger; a Blofield agent of SPECTRE. There was a mild twittering of approval from the branch's minions that were in the office today. Q turned to give them all a look as the twittering stopped and they returned to their duties. This was not the first operation they had seen being run simultaneous from Q-branch and the situation room. Turning back he saved the clip off as evidence to be used in the trial – if the man survived the next few minutes. “Good catch.”

“When I can,” Bond drawled and Q suppressed a smile. Next to him, Tanner could not quite do the same, turning it into a coughing laugh of sorts. Q glanced at the other man who merely shrugged as if to non-verbally say 'And...?'

The operation had been termed Silent, fitting for the Diogenes Club and Mycroft had spun his little web for the last few months to entrap various members of Parliament who had been in support of Nine-Eyes. One by one, each were arrested and taken away; one by one, each were questioned and some released back as reverse moles while others stepped down in retirement or sudden resignation.

This particular one apparently decided he was not to go so quietly into the night and ordered a hit on the club itself. This little rat had also done some of his homework on the people he and his cohorts now pointed guns at. Q had only gotten an alert message that something was happening at the Diogenes Club when the cameras started to go offline. It prompted him to turn on the backup ones in time to see the club go into lock down. The little rat had timed his hit rather well, picking a time where Sherlock and Dr. Watson would be visiting Mycroft on one of their latest cases.

Sherlock had been texting him during the early days of the operation, rather bored with the whole thing until it showed a connection with the leftover remnants of Magnussen's blackmail empire. That prompted an immediate visit to Mycroft followed by a series of cases that kept Sherlock and Dr. Watson quite busy. It seemed Magnussen had a strong connection to SPECTRE. Q had left his brother alone, mindful of the last time he attempted to poke around the whole Magnussen affair. He did not need another suspension on his official record. It was only the alert of the Diogenes Club cameras that he knew the operation to be in full swing.

“Sir,” Tanner spoke into his microphone, “should we consider alerting Scotland Yard or perhaps send in an agent?”

“Mr. Holmes seems to have the situation under control for now,” M replied his tone mild. “We wouldn't want to disrupt a tenuous situation.”

“Sir,” Q pursed his lips as he watched his older brother talk to the rat in question. Disdain was evident on Mycroft's face, even with a gun pointed so close to his head. The words he was saying, even with no audio, radiated Mycroft's clear displeasure. Q knew his brother was more than likely having a little too much fun ripping the poor rat to pieces. Perhaps it was only a saving grace that Sherlock's mouth was duct taped. “I'd like to suggest we send 007 in perhaps?”

Silence answered him and Q could only imagine M was surprised by it. “I think it would be safe to assume that there are those outside the room,” he prompted in a follow up.

“Very well,” M's voice came over. “007, please report to the Quartermaster department.”

“Very good, sir,” Bond's voice was smoothly professional.

“Excuse me,” he nodded to Tanner who nodded back and took over sitting by the primary station where the cameras were situated. Contrary to his status as M's assistant, Tanner did have some knowledge regarding computer systems and operations, perhaps more than Q since he had been at his job for far longer and served as the executive assistant to the position of M for a very long time.

He waited for Bond just outside of the keyed doors to the department's labs and the agent arrived in a scant few minutes, having taken the elevator down. Muting his outgoing comm line, Q greeted the agent with a bland smile, noting the impeccably tailored suit the agent wore, hiding his trusty Walther in a jacket holster. “007,” he said quietly.

“Q,” Bond touched his ear, muting his own line. “Should I be concerned?”

“You tell me, Bond,” Q replied and gestured for the agent to follow him.

“Mr. Holmes would certainly enjoy himself,” Bond replied. Q was secretly pleased that the agent understood the situation completely and remembered what it was like to be subjected to one of Mycroft's more subtle scans. “He tends to have a certain effect on people.”

“That he does,” Q replied as he turned down another hall before stopping by a door. He keyed in a code freely, knowing that there were no cameras in the hallway and also a sign of trust in the double-o that stood near him. The door opened with a quiet hiss and Q pushed it open some more.

“No gadgets?”

“Not this time,” Q replied. “I could swear, all of you double-o's wanting gadgets from my branch.”

“We do promise to return them-”

“Never intact.” He raised an eyebrow at Bond, daring the agent to challenge his words. Bond acknowledged it with a tilt of his head and a sardonic-looking smile. However, his eyes were already on alert, taking in the new surroundings he was going into. Q gestured towards the slightly opened door. “The tunnel will lead you to the kitchen doors of the Diogenes Club. From there, the office you are looking for will be near the front of the club to your left.”

“I remember,” Bond replied quietly. At the same time, he drew out his Walther smoothly from its holster and activated it. The three dots lit up, palm print encoded for a more personalized statement of the license to kill. Q suppressed a smile. He loved designing that particular gun and to see that Bond had somehow recovered it from Shanghai... Bond's actions were deliberate as he turned his head a little towards him and tilted the gun to show it off. Q met the piercing blue eyes and familiar lazy smile that appeared on the double-o's face with the barest nod of acknowledgment in the return of a weapon – mostly intact. The agent then dropped his smile, all business, as he headed into the secret passageway.

Q pulled the door close behind him and huffed a quiet sigh. He trusted Bond to get rid of all of the hostiles that were outside of the room. Inside...well, inside that would be up to a certain agent to whom no one knew existed except for himself and Mycroft. Or Sherlock would probably be the first one to land the blow followed quickly by John Watson. Either way, the poor sods in side would not stand a chance at all against two Holmes brother, an ex-military sharpshooter and medic, and a personal assistant with a very unique set of skills.

He returned to the lab in short order, reactivating his microphone with a tap of his ear. “Tanner,” he greeted M's assistant.

“Nothing seems to change except Mr. Holmes seems to be sporting a slightly bloodied nose.”

“Sherlock Holmes tends to have that effect on people,” Q replied and could see Tanner start in surprise as he rounded the desk and looked at the video feeds. He knew he had surprised the assistant with his knowledge of what might have transpired, especially since he had said a vague 'Mr. Holmes', but to Q, it was rather easy.

Mycroft would start the interrogation, but it was Sherlock who tended to barrel over any forms of subtly and try to wrest control from their older brother, duct taped mouth or not. Sherlock then probably decided to irritate the rat into training the gun on him and more often than not, got hit for his troubles. One might call it sentiment, but Q tended not to think in such a way. To him, it was rather strategic. Sherlock knew where Anthea was standing and knew her real identity. Glancing at the screen, Q easily discerned that his favorite brother had put his strategy into play once it seemed he had convinced one of the captors to rip off the duct tape over his mouth.

All that was left was to watch it unfold.

The audio text kept scrolling on the video feed as it approximated a translation of words spoken. Q did not quite pay attention to the bravado thrown nor of the acerbic remarks from Sherlock or Mycroft. Instead, he watched the body language of those in the room, waiting for that particular moment-

There.

The rat of a politician jerked and snapped his head towards the door that led out of Mycroft's office. In the far corner, one of his men must have heard the pops of gunfire or something going on outside as several of them turned towards the doors. At the same time the text line of Sherlock shouting something appeared: [Vatican cameos].

From the folds of his jacket, Sherlock produced a very familiar looking pen, one that Q thought had been returned to him when Sherlock had been recalled from his suicide mission. Clearly, it had not... His brother depressed the button, shielding his eyes with his other hand.

The compact flash grenade went off, blinding those who were unfortunate to not realize what was happening. Q winced as the grenade also blinded the cameras momentarily, but as the glare faded, utter chaos reigned on the screen. 002 wasted no time, apparently having killed the one closest to her and snapped free of her restraints even before the effects of the grenade wore off.

She now held a gun, firing with the uncanny precision that all agents were required to qualify for their license to kill. Two more went down. Not even pausing, she vaulted across Mycroft's table, snatching a pen up with her free hand and stabbed it into the neck of another armed assailant. She wrenched the flailing body as the assailant lost his grip on the pistol. The gun went flying, straight into the bound hands of Dr. Watson who immediately started firing just as 002 shielded herself with the formerly armed person from the incoming bullets.

Behind them, Q saw Sherlock pulling Mycroft further down, shielding him with his body as both tried to make their way to the large thick oak desk to use it as cover. 002 and Dr. Watson returned fire in short order, downing the rest of the armed assailants. It was over when she finally released the bullet-ridden body that she had been using as a meat shield and it flopped unceremoniously onto the floor.

However, 002 was not finished as she immediately stormed over to the door and held up her gun. Tension lined her body before she seemingly relaxed and lowered his gun as the door opened. Q smiled a little at the sight of Bond appearing on the cameras as he took a step into the office. He looked slightly disheveled and dirtied from dispatching those outside of the room, but seemed to accept the massacre that had occurred in the office with relative ease and aplomb. The text box flashed words as Bond greeted the others and Q relaxed a little. The agents would be able to handle things from here on out.

He shrunk the window and turned to tell Tanner that it was a job well done, only to have the words die on his lips. Tanner looked rather tense and was not staring at him. Q turned to follow the assistant's gaze only to see a gun pointed at them.

And the holder was none other than his own assistant, a man he had promoted into the position of R. The man tapped his ear and Q reluctantly tapped his own ear, muting the comm line.

“Well...at least we know how much Magnussen knew...” Q murmured.

“...R-”

Q never heard whatever else Tanner was about to say as his world suddenly exploded in a deafening roar blasting across his ears, followed by the searing pain cutting through his head. Then, it was all black.

~END~

**Author's Note:**

> There is a continuation in the next story.


End file.
